Geeks To Go is a helpful hub, where thousands of volunteer geeks quickly serve friendly answers and support. Check out the forums and get free advice from the experts. Register now to gain access to all of our features, it's FREE and only takes one minute. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to create topics, post replies to existing threads, give reputation to your fellow members, get your own private messenger, post status updates, manage your profile and so much more.

Should I replace my HD?

guy_x

Posted 30 July 2005 - 10:47 PM

guy_x

Member

Member

27 posts

Some days ago I ran a scan at my PC as I do periodically, running Adaware, Spybot, Ewido and Panda.

- All was good until Ewido found C:\WINDOWS\tmpcpyis.bat infected, which was automatically quarantined; once Ewido was finished I ran Panda and so far it found some "SaveNow" adware in registry, backed up too before cleaning... I went to sleep, leaving the scan running.

- Then when I woke up I go to check my PC and find it totally black screened with this message: 'A disk read error occurred, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to restart' so i do it but nothing changes and the same sequence keeps repeating. I Tried booting from Windows XP installation CD, but just got me a 'CHECKING HARDWARE CONFIGURATION' message, followed by a black screen.

- I called Dell Support and they gave me some directions (but none worked) including running a test... memory and processor were OK, even Hard Drive (physically). So they told me it was probably an Operating System error and that I have to perform a low level format after looking for someone who could help me with backing-up my data.

Advertisements

GeneralAres

Posted 31 July 2005 - 01:35 AM

guy_x

Posted 31 July 2005 - 05:05 PM

guy_x

Member

Topic Starter

Member

27 posts

The problem is that I can't boot or run from the CD unit... I have tried with a CD containing diagnostics and utilities that came with my PC when bought and got the same 'CHECKING HARDWARE CONFIGURATION' message followed by a black screen, I'm also unable to run Windows in safe mode. Gonna give a try using that diagnostics, though.